AstroBiology

Astrobiology pertains to the innate human desire of wanting to know whether we truly are alone in the Universe or not. Although ambitious, the field of astrobiology is in no way a fantasy. There is plentiful evidence of life-forming chemical compounds in even as close as the moons of Jupiter, i.e., Io and Enceladus. Till a few decades ago, we were trapped in our ideology of a ‘Roche limit’ for planets to be capable of harbouring life, but this notion slowly dissolved with the advancements in Astrobiology. We now know of creatures called ‘Extremophiles’ here on Earth that have adapted to live in the most hazardous environments such as near underwater hydrothermal vents that spew out hot gases of intoxicating sulphur at hundreds of degrees! Astrochemistry, which comes under astrobiology has made it possible to understand how conditions on our Earth were in the distant past, and what the future has in store for the planet due to human-induced climate change, by studying sister-planets such as Venus and possibly even Mars to arrive at a solid conclusion. Astrobiology is surely a field with an enormous scope in the relatively near future!